Maglev vehicles of this kind are known from prior art (e.g. DE 10 2004 056 438 A1). Guiding magnet systems of this type serve the purpose of keeping a magnetic levitation vehicle within the track gauge, particularly during curve rides and with lateral load interferences (e.g. due to wind), and for this purpose they are controlled by the aid of control circuits and gap sensors assigned to them in such a manner that a gap hereinafter designated as guiding gap between their magnet pole shanks and a lateral guiding rail is always maintained at a pre-selected value, e.g. 10 mm. With prior art guiding magnet systems, two groups of three guiding magnets each arranged in series and one braking magnet each located between these two groups are provided per vehicle or vehicle section in the longitudinal direction of the vehicle to serve this purpose. Each guiding magnet is formed by a magnet arrangement which has a core extending in the vehicle's longitudinal direction and two winding levels in which several windings each and gap sensors assigned to them are arranged behind each other. The windings and gap sensors in each guiding magnet are so connected in series in pairs each and so connected to the control circuits that a far-reaching redundancy is obtained. This means that the two windings lying one above each other at those ends of a guiding magnet which border a zone free from guiding magnets, i.e. which for example border a gap formed by a braking facility or the front or rear end of the vehicle are served by two different control circuits. At the same time, a redundant behavior at those ends of the guiding magnets that border another guiding magnet is achieved in that in case of a failure of the windings or control circuits located there the guiding function is taken over by the neighbored guiding magnet by feeding to the adjacent windings thereof a correspondingly higher current.
Guiding magnet systems composed of such guiding magnets are of a symmetrical setup throughout. On the one hand this means they are equally set-up regardless of whether they are installed into a nose section, a center section, or a rear section. On the other hand, the symmetry also consists in that the guiding magnets are mirror-symmetrically configured and arranged on both sides of a center level of the sections extending diagonally to the direction of travel, wherein a central area of each section in most cases is a zone free of guiding magnets and provided with a braking facility. The only deviation from an exact mirror-symmetry may consist in that transitional areas between two vehicle sections are also provided with guiding magnets and therefore the guiding magnets bordering them and arranged in the sections involved are provided with a number of windings which is less than the number that would be required on omission of the guiding magnets existing in the transitional areas.
The guiding magnet systems of magnetic levitation vehicles of the kind described are generally overdimensioned. Owing to the described symmetrical type of construction, the magnetic and/or guiding forces to be achieved are calculated based upon the heaviest loads occurring in operation. Though this bears the advantage that the entire magnetic levitation vehicle can be equipped with few different guiding magnet types, one has to put up with the fact that too high a reserve of magnetic force is available at some points along the vehicle and therefore more weight than necessary is installed due to the accordingly largely dimensioned iron cores. If this is to be avoided, loads may occur at certain points that are so high that the force of the guiding magnets is insufficient here, which would have an adverse influence on traveling comfort.